The current interpretation of a patent is one where a company leverages an innovation against their competition, either by blocking the competition from creating innovations that use or build off of, or are in some way competitive to, the said invention, or to extort obscene profits in royalties and licensing to competitors that have no choice but to use the innovation.
The reality is that patents are public disclosure of an idea which was intended to STIMULATE innovation by sharing ideas and having others build off the original idea.
Patents were explained to me once, but an actual lawyer, in this way:
Company A builds a chair with 3 legs. It works well but under some instances the chair could fall over. Sales of the chair are low because consumers find it lacking in overall functionality and safety.
Company B sees the original 3 leg chair patent and decide they can improve upon it by adding a 4th leg. Doing so improves the functionality of the original concept. Company B enters a cross licensing/royalty relationship where both companies can now sell chairs with 4 legs. The original Company A now has stronger sales (and higher profits) and Company B can now sell an improved concept from the expansion of the original idea. The idea is that by Company A originally disclosing the innovation of a chair with 3 legs allows the idea to be improved upon and the original inventor enjoying greater success off of the work another inventor did to improve the idea. Both companies benefit, consumers benefit, society is advanced.
In today's market, Apple would have invented a 2 leg chair, told consumers that any company that uses more then 2 legs on a chair are stupid, sued anybody that tried to make a better chair, and in the end Google creates a chair on top of a ball and Microsoft creates a table that could be used like a chair...or bed.
I don't agree that patents themselves are at fault here, only in how greedy self-interested corporations are using patents to shut out competition. Arrogant companies like Apple seem to feel they are the only innovators in an industry and thus do not want other companies to use or build on their ideas (even though Apple seems to consistently patent other peoples original ideas and claim it their own). Apple has created an aggressive market where competitors are hording patents and using them as weapons against each other. Apple is not going to cross license with Google, and vice versa, so both platforms evolve independent of each other and so, ultimately, to the detriment of consumers that can't get the best of all innovations in one package.
I do agree, however, that software patents should be abolished completely. It is trivial to create a software meme that can be easily reproduced by another independent entities. I have always felt that patents should only be awarded to non-trivial invention. If an invention involves significant investment in time and money or leaps in technical advancement to achieve then the patent should be awarded, and thus, disclosed so it can advance innovation and invention by allowing other companies to build off the idea without the initial huge investment in time and effort.
Rounding the corners on rectangles is a trivial non-invention, it should never even have been considered for patent application.
I think patent laws need to change, but patents themselves should not be abolished. Someone that invests time, money, and significant effort to invent something deserves some protection from unscrupulous others who will only copy the idea and profit off of it. But the current trend to patent "everything" including highly trivial junk should be discouraged.
Yes, bingo. Most Android games are designed for touch, without game controller support. So you only get 166 titles that support the OUYA. While the OUYA supports the Android platform, it DOESN'T support the content already out there. That's the scam. This system is at the mercy of people that will bother to support the OUYA, not a system that just magically works with all Android content.
I recently got a Nexus 10 and having spent hours on the Android marketplace looking for some half-decent game that is not Angry Birds, I came up far short. Sure you get something that plugs Android into your TV, then what. Hope the games come while you struggle to play Angry Birds on a platform it was not intended for?
The complete dearth of quality game content kind of suggests that for a good long time OUYA will not be as revolutionary as everyone thinks. Not to mention that what games are there are intended for touch screens, not game controller play. I'd expect a LONG list of content "not supported by your device" coming up on OUYA.
I think Google Play is getting better, but its still a far cry from the robust platform of quality games found on iDevices AND Android games are a far cry from the content you are going to see on the current or next generation of platforms. OUYA might encourage more game development, but again, will it drive up higher amounts of quality titles, I doubt it.
This project was over-hyped from the beginning and I think this is just plain ol' highway robbery for all the KickStarter supporters.
Yes, it would be awesome of have a fridge that can keep track of all the food in it, but the problem is that we all don't just buy food with barcodes on it. So sure, add a camera to the fridge to it sees the potatoes you add to it, but then you still have to run your food going in and out past a camera for it to recognize what you are taking in and out of it. So put 20 cameras in the thing, but I can easily see situations where the camera is not going to see all things at all times. Also how to track content in jars and containers. What if you have a jar of mayo that was used to store some home-made pickles?
The reality is that total automation in the kitchen may be a problem set that is just too difficult to invent. Nobody wants to program a fridge. Nobody wants to have to scan every item, weight it, etc just to have a quick snack. And of course lets not forget that food is not only stored in the fridge, you want every cupboard equipped with this technology, whether it stores food or not? I don't want my kitchen to cost $100k just for the simplicity of food arriving at my door step when I run out.
While I think there are lots of areas where home automation can be improved dramatically, I just got the Nest thermostat and absolutely love I can change the temperature when I am in my rec-room in the basement without having to go upstairs, there are many fantasies that just will never be solved due to the incredibly large amount of complexity involved to engineer a solution that we consider incredibly mundane, like knowing when to buy a new jar of mayonnaise.
Steam routinely sells games at significant discounts. You can get AAA titles for under $10. Do people feel they need to recover a $10 investment by turning around and selling it for, what, $5, $2? Do people feel they need to look for bargain games resold for single digit prices?
Also for the most part the majority of AAA titles on Steam are also available for physical purchase. You opt to buy through the convenience of online distribution by forgoing the ability to trade or resell the game.
So I don't agree that Valve should be sued for game ownership. You clearly are making a choice to buy from the Steam walled garden, meaning you are accepting whatever state of terms they apply to the purchase of that game.
I think Valve should just pull Steam support from Germany, period. End this BS about pandering to lawyers only interested in a cash payout. I am also tired of petulant twits that feel they are owed something back. Gaming is a purely optional function of society. Buying a game is about having disposable income. You have a choice to buy a game or not and its about time adults and caregivers of infants started making responsible decisions about how they spend their money. Any dumb-ass that buys a game through Steam and are surprised they can't resell it is just that, a dumb-ass. Companies should have a right to block dumb users, and countries of dumb users.
Microsoft is continuing their current trend of re-inventing the wheel and making everything different, yet the same. For instance Windows RT, the UI development framework, is strikingly similar to WPF, albeit with some strange and head scratching changes that make sense to only that one guy at Microsoft. I would imagine that Microsoft is probably going to re-brand DirectX or XNA into some unified framework that has a Metro-y Windows 8 like feel to it, maybe merging development across PC, mobile and consoles into on consistent API, which is different, yet strikingly similar to XNA or DirectX.
Its just part of Microsoft's current strategy to piss off about as many people as possible, consumers, investors, developers, content creators, Google, etc.
Saying there are no real investors just speaks to how the BBC has become nothing more then a sensational tabloid service rather then anything to do with news. And does speak to the current state of our society in general for valuing what the BBC has to "report".
No, you are not going to see the world's next big invention on the Dragon's Den (or Shark Tank for you Americans). Someone is not going to walk up to the panel with a solution for the world's energy crisis having worked on the problem in their garage for a couple of years. Also inventions are not just stuff you get on a cellphone or tablet.
Where invention is happening is in laboratories with subject matter that would make the average BBC employee's head explode with its complexity and impact on society. Maybe rather then writing up some drivel about the lack of innovation and invention in the world, tour any post-graduate lab at a university for an hour.
I would agree with one sentiment from the BBC article, there are few innovations that are readily digestible by the average human. For instance discovering the Higgs Boson particle is barely understandable by the average person. While this was a huge win in the field of physics, most people could barely understand what actually happened and few news sites could even report properly the impact it has.
So, just because the iPhone has not introduced anything new for the last few years doesn't mean invention is dead, it just proves that news reporting is a dead art.
Microsoft has had a phone product since 2003, tied heavily to their platform, and it has been soundly ignored for the last 10 years by the enterprise crowd. Windows Mobile actually had about 24% world market share in 2004, it dropped to 14% by 2008 even before iPhone came out, and then it became irrelevant afterwards.
Its pretty obvious that the enterprise types do not value Windows phones in spite of tight integration into Microsoft platforms.
Savior by the enterprise is the biggest myth for Windows Phone, I think RIM has a better chance to win back management types that were hooked on their CrackBerries before iPhones came out. Once an addict, always an addict.
Its laughable for Microsoft or RIM to believe they can claw their way into the top 2, and I mean every other smartphone OS developer would have to have a solid year of chronic brain farts for FireFox or Ubuntu to even break 4th place.
The fight is going to be for #3 for a good long time.
Its not impossible for Apple or Google to slip (will give it to Apple to fall from grace before Google any day), just look at how quickly RIM dropped from nearly 50% global market penetration to less then 1%. But I can safely say that nothing released, about to be released, or even hinted at is capable of breaking the top 2..
Yes, but after nearly 40 years of research solar solutions are only capable of capturing, maybe, 10% of that energy, and it doesn't seem to be increasing at any rate that will match our needs NOW and given the future of population growth.
Vapid idealists love to think that yes, there is lots of solar energy out there, but then fail to realize the technical and scientific challenges to actually achieve a society living purely off the sun.
If there is one thing sadder then someone spending their life looking for ghosts or claiming psychic powers is someone dedicating their life to debunking it.
The whole point of Pro is for Professionals. This was supposed to be the workhorse Surface product that developers would conceivably use to develop a new generation of Windows Apps directly on a tablet target device. No more emulators, no more having to grab a second device and copy the software to it to test. The problem with only having a limited amount of "fast" storage available to professionals is it is woefully not enough to do professional things, like compile software or other content creation tasks. That 22 gb doesn't even take into consideration how much Visual Studio would consume before even getting to work on a project. Even the 128gb version is inadequate, i have over 40gb of project data on my work computer at any given time, and that is even being conservative with only checking out the projects I am directly working on. Sure, you could conceivably use external USB storage, but come on, what is the point of a highly portable tablet if you have to plug wires into it all the time.
No, there is no excuse for this. Microsoft missed the target audience with this by not even starting storage at a conservative 128 gb.
Microsoft is losing it big time. This was supposed to be a new generation of products that gets people excited about Microsoft in the tablet market, instead its just one stupid thing after another. I was waiting for Surface Pro as potentially a workstation replacement for my job, but considering its nothing more then a tablet with a butchered version of Windows desktop running in the background and slightly beefier CPU then most tablets (but far leaner then any desktop), it's very disappointing. And the price for this POS is ridiculous, Microsoft isn't Apple, they can't pull off prestige products that cost more then they are worth.
Microsoft did nothing to make this product actually usable by professionals, your buying a significantly crippled Ultrabook.
Largely I think this move from Apple ensures they can charge $800 for a device when Google is selling something for 1/2 the price which has higher resolution and more processing power. A new display is expensive to develop, new CPU's are expensive to develop. Storage is cheap and its the quick and easy (and dirty) way for Apple to dupe millions into buying something with an obscene amount of profit margin by spending a few extra dollars on the storage chips they put in the "new" iPad. I will stake my life on the fact that near 80% of the people buying the new 128gb iPad will probably not even use 1/4 of the storage a year later.
In the same breath, Apple just released commentary about how quickly iCloud has grown and claim that cloud services is the future of their company. Apple has become champions of schizophrenic business decisions. They want the cloud to be huge, but then they release a larger capacity iPad. They claim its the post-PC era but then revamp their entire Mac lineup to be more attractive and competitive. Its almost like everything Apple does these days is negated by something else they do.
Any wonder why investors are skittish? Apple has lost all focus other then to make money. Its a shame that this year will probably be full of shitty tactics like this only to try and gain more profit.
The whole point of Surface Pro is to actually develop apps on it, its a hybrid device that is a little tablet and a little laptop. Only stupid people think that iPad with 128gb of storage is intended to compete with Surface Pro, or Ultrabooks for that matter.
Until Apple allows the iPad to support content creation (true content creation, not the limited "hold your hands" approach to content creation that it currently has), then I don't think anybody should confuse iPad in the same market as Ultrabooks, or the jack of all trades Surface Pro.
Slashdot Mirror
That Microsoft didn't like how another company was doing business...
Just like how it tore up the PC industry.
Think about it...
just a little more...
now you get it.
Yes, there are no more real innovations in Science anymore. Bah. Wicked hard bubbles is the future baby!
I don't use a PC for copyright infringement anymore.
period.
The current interpretation of a patent is one where a company leverages an innovation against their competition, either by blocking the competition from creating innovations that use or build off of, or are in some way competitive to, the said invention, or to extort obscene profits in royalties and licensing to competitors that have no choice but to use the innovation.
The reality is that patents are public disclosure of an idea which was intended to STIMULATE innovation by sharing ideas and having others build off the original idea.
Patents were explained to me once, but an actual lawyer, in this way:
Company A builds a chair with 3 legs. It works well but under some instances the chair could fall over. Sales of the chair are low because consumers find it lacking in overall functionality and safety.
Company B sees the original 3 leg chair patent and decide they can improve upon it by adding a 4th leg. Doing so improves the functionality of the original concept. Company B enters a cross licensing/royalty relationship where both companies can now sell chairs with 4 legs. The original Company A now has stronger sales (and higher profits) and Company B can now sell an improved concept from the expansion of the original idea. The idea is that by Company A originally disclosing the innovation of a chair with 3 legs allows the idea to be improved upon and the original inventor enjoying greater success off of the work another inventor did to improve the idea. Both companies benefit, consumers benefit, society is advanced.
In today's market, Apple would have invented a 2 leg chair, told consumers that any company that uses more then 2 legs on a chair are stupid, sued anybody that tried to make a better chair, and in the end Google creates a chair on top of a ball and Microsoft creates a table that could be used like a chair...or bed.
I don't agree that patents themselves are at fault here, only in how greedy self-interested corporations are using patents to shut out competition. Arrogant companies like Apple seem to feel they are the only innovators in an industry and thus do not want other companies to use or build on their ideas (even though Apple seems to consistently patent other peoples original ideas and claim it their own). Apple has created an aggressive market where competitors are hording patents and using them as weapons against each other. Apple is not going to cross license with Google, and vice versa, so both platforms evolve independent of each other and so, ultimately, to the detriment of consumers that can't get the best of all innovations in one package.
I do agree, however, that software patents should be abolished completely. It is trivial to create a software meme that can be easily reproduced by another independent entities. I have always felt that patents should only be awarded to non-trivial invention. If an invention involves significant investment in time and money or leaps in technical advancement to achieve then the patent should be awarded, and thus, disclosed so it can advance innovation and invention by allowing other companies to build off the idea without the initial huge investment in time and effort.
Rounding the corners on rectangles is a trivial non-invention, it should never even have been considered for patent application.
I think patent laws need to change, but patents themselves should not be abolished. Someone that invests time, money, and significant effort to invent something deserves some protection from unscrupulous others who will only copy the idea and profit off of it. But the current trend to patent "everything" including highly trivial junk should be discouraged.
Maybe someone should read a few science blogs every now and then.
OhYA, vector gaming! Lets game like its 1979!!!
Yes, bingo. Most Android games are designed for touch, without game controller support. So you only get 166 titles that support the OUYA. While the OUYA supports the Android platform, it DOESN'T support the content already out there. That's the scam. This system is at the mercy of people that will bother to support the OUYA, not a system that just magically works with all Android content.
I recently got a Nexus 10 and having spent hours on the Android marketplace looking for some half-decent game that is not Angry Birds, I came up far short. Sure you get something that plugs Android into your TV, then what. Hope the games come while you struggle to play Angry Birds on a platform it was not intended for?
The complete dearth of quality game content kind of suggests that for a good long time OUYA will not be as revolutionary as everyone thinks. Not to mention that what games are there are intended for touch screens, not game controller play. I'd expect a LONG list of content "not supported by your device" coming up on OUYA.
I think Google Play is getting better, but its still a far cry from the robust platform of quality games found on iDevices AND Android games are a far cry from the content you are going to see on the current or next generation of platforms. OUYA might encourage more game development, but again, will it drive up higher amounts of quality titles, I doubt it.
This project was over-hyped from the beginning and I think this is just plain ol' highway robbery for all the KickStarter supporters.
All 7 remaining people using Java are angered?
Yes, it would be awesome of have a fridge that can keep track of all the food in it, but the problem is that we all don't just buy food with barcodes on it. So sure, add a camera to the fridge to it sees the potatoes you add to it, but then you still have to run your food going in and out past a camera for it to recognize what you are taking in and out of it. So put 20 cameras in the thing, but I can easily see situations where the camera is not going to see all things at all times. Also how to track content in jars and containers. What if you have a jar of mayo that was used to store some home-made pickles?
The reality is that total automation in the kitchen may be a problem set that is just too difficult to invent. Nobody wants to program a fridge. Nobody wants to have to scan every item, weight it, etc just to have a quick snack. And of course lets not forget that food is not only stored in the fridge, you want every cupboard equipped with this technology, whether it stores food or not? I don't want my kitchen to cost $100k just for the simplicity of food arriving at my door step when I run out.
While I think there are lots of areas where home automation can be improved dramatically, I just got the Nest thermostat and absolutely love I can change the temperature when I am in my rec-room in the basement without having to go upstairs, there are many fantasies that just will never be solved due to the incredibly large amount of complexity involved to engineer a solution that we consider incredibly mundane, like knowing when to buy a new jar of mayonnaise.
Some things just don't have a solution to them.
Steam routinely sells games at significant discounts. You can get AAA titles for under $10. Do people feel they need to recover a $10 investment by turning around and selling it for, what, $5, $2? Do people feel they need to look for bargain games resold for single digit prices?
Also for the most part the majority of AAA titles on Steam are also available for physical purchase. You opt to buy through the convenience of online distribution by forgoing the ability to trade or resell the game.
So I don't agree that Valve should be sued for game ownership. You clearly are making a choice to buy from the Steam walled garden, meaning you are accepting whatever state of terms they apply to the purchase of that game.
I think Valve should just pull Steam support from Germany, period. End this BS about pandering to lawyers only interested in a cash payout. I am also tired of petulant twits that feel they are owed something back. Gaming is a purely optional function of society. Buying a game is about having disposable income. You have a choice to buy a game or not and its about time adults and caregivers of infants started making responsible decisions about how they spend their money. Any dumb-ass that buys a game through Steam and are surprised they can't resell it is just that, a dumb-ass. Companies should have a right to block dumb users, and countries of dumb users.
Microsoft is continuing their current trend of re-inventing the wheel and making everything different, yet the same. For instance Windows RT, the UI development framework, is strikingly similar to WPF, albeit with some strange and head scratching changes that make sense to only that one guy at Microsoft. I would imagine that Microsoft is probably going to re-brand DirectX or XNA into some unified framework that has a Metro-y Windows 8 like feel to it, maybe merging development across PC, mobile and consoles into on consistent API, which is different, yet strikingly similar to XNA or DirectX.
Its just part of Microsoft's current strategy to piss off about as many people as possible, consumers, investors, developers, content creators, Google, etc.
Saying there are no real investors just speaks to how the BBC has become nothing more then a sensational tabloid service rather then anything to do with news. And does speak to the current state of our society in general for valuing what the BBC has to "report".
No, you are not going to see the world's next big invention on the Dragon's Den (or Shark Tank for you Americans). Someone is not going to walk up to the panel with a solution for the world's energy crisis having worked on the problem in their garage for a couple of years. Also inventions are not just stuff you get on a cellphone or tablet.
Where invention is happening is in laboratories with subject matter that would make the average BBC employee's head explode with its complexity and impact on society. Maybe rather then writing up some drivel about the lack of innovation and invention in the world, tour any post-graduate lab at a university for an hour.
I would agree with one sentiment from the BBC article, there are few innovations that are readily digestible by the average human. For instance discovering the Higgs Boson particle is barely understandable by the average person. While this was a huge win in the field of physics, most people could barely understand what actually happened and few news sites could even report properly the impact it has.
So, just because the iPhone has not introduced anything new for the last few years doesn't mean invention is dead, it just proves that news reporting is a dead art.
...is that homes often house stupid people.
Microsoft has had a phone product since 2003, tied heavily to their platform, and it has been soundly ignored for the last 10 years by the enterprise crowd. Windows Mobile actually had about 24% world market share in 2004, it dropped to 14% by 2008 even before iPhone came out, and then it became irrelevant afterwards.
Its pretty obvious that the enterprise types do not value Windows phones in spite of tight integration into Microsoft platforms.
Savior by the enterprise is the biggest myth for Windows Phone, I think RIM has a better chance to win back management types that were hooked on their CrackBerries before iPhones came out. Once an addict, always an addict.
Its laughable for Microsoft or RIM to believe they can claw their way into the top 2, and I mean every other smartphone OS developer would have to have a solid year of chronic brain farts for FireFox or Ubuntu to even break 4th place.
The fight is going to be for #3 for a good long time.
Its not impossible for Apple or Google to slip (will give it to Apple to fall from grace before Google any day), just look at how quickly RIM dropped from nearly 50% global market penetration to less then 1%. But I can safely say that nothing released, about to be released, or even hinted at is capable of breaking the top 2..
Yes, but after nearly 40 years of research solar solutions are only capable of capturing, maybe, 10% of that energy, and it doesn't seem to be increasing at any rate that will match our needs NOW and given the future of population growth.
Vapid idealists love to think that yes, there is lots of solar energy out there, but then fail to realize the technical and scientific challenges to actually achieve a society living purely off the sun.
If there is one thing sadder then someone spending their life looking for ghosts or claiming psychic powers is someone dedicating their life to debunking it.
The whole point of Pro is for Professionals. This was supposed to be the workhorse Surface product that developers would conceivably use to develop a new generation of Windows Apps directly on a tablet target device. No more emulators, no more having to grab a second device and copy the software to it to test. The problem with only having a limited amount of "fast" storage available to professionals is it is woefully not enough to do professional things, like compile software or other content creation tasks. That 22 gb doesn't even take into consideration how much Visual Studio would consume before even getting to work on a project. Even the 128gb version is inadequate, i have over 40gb of project data on my work computer at any given time, and that is even being conservative with only checking out the projects I am directly working on. Sure, you could conceivably use external USB storage, but come on, what is the point of a highly portable tablet if you have to plug wires into it all the time.
No, there is no excuse for this. Microsoft missed the target audience with this by not even starting storage at a conservative 128 gb.
Microsoft is losing it big time. This was supposed to be a new generation of products that gets people excited about Microsoft in the tablet market, instead its just one stupid thing after another. I was waiting for Surface Pro as potentially a workstation replacement for my job, but considering its nothing more then a tablet with a butchered version of Windows desktop running in the background and slightly beefier CPU then most tablets (but far leaner then any desktop), it's very disappointing. And the price for this POS is ridiculous, Microsoft isn't Apple, they can't pull off prestige products that cost more then they are worth.
Microsoft did nothing to make this product actually usable by professionals, your buying a significantly crippled Ultrabook.
Largely I think this move from Apple ensures they can charge $800 for a device when Google is selling something for 1/2 the price which has higher resolution and more processing power. A new display is expensive to develop, new CPU's are expensive to develop. Storage is cheap and its the quick and easy (and dirty) way for Apple to dupe millions into buying something with an obscene amount of profit margin by spending a few extra dollars on the storage chips they put in the "new" iPad. I will stake my life on the fact that near 80% of the people buying the new 128gb iPad will probably not even use 1/4 of the storage a year later.
In the same breath, Apple just released commentary about how quickly iCloud has grown and claim that cloud services is the future of their company. Apple has become champions of schizophrenic business decisions. They want the cloud to be huge, but then they release a larger capacity iPad. They claim its the post-PC era but then revamp their entire Mac lineup to be more attractive and competitive. Its almost like everything Apple does these days is negated by something else they do.
Any wonder why investors are skittish? Apple has lost all focus other then to make money. Its a shame that this year will probably be full of shitty tactics like this only to try and gain more profit.
The whole point of Surface Pro is to actually develop apps on it, its a hybrid device that is a little tablet and a little laptop. Only stupid people think that iPad with 128gb of storage is intended to compete with Surface Pro, or Ultrabooks for that matter.
Until Apple allows the iPad to support content creation (true content creation, not the limited "hold your hands" approach to content creation that it currently has), then I don't think anybody should confuse iPad in the same market as Ultrabooks, or the jack of all trades Surface Pro.
Burn...wait.